Matvei Michkov and Rick Tocchet’s relationship continues to garner attention despite Flyers’ success
The Philadelphia Flyers are hanging with the best teams in the league, but their success is being overshadowed by the relationship between one of the team’s star players and its bench boss.
The topic of forward Matvei Michkov and head coach Rick Tocchet became a talking point after Tocchet went off on the media after Monday’s morning skate, when he was asked several questions about the Russian youngster, especially after the two were seen having a discussion on the bench during Saturday’s shootout loss to the New York Rangers.
While he wasn’t critical about Michkov’s performance this year, he didn’t seem to be pleased about attention being taken away from other players who have helped Philadelphia move up to second in the Metropolitan Division.
On Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton discuss how the relationship between Michkov and Tocchet continues to place a cloud over the Flyers.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Even though the Flyers keep winning, the Mitchkov-Tocchet stuff continues to be a storyline…What do you make of the way Tocchet’s kind of handling this whole thing with Michkov? Goal production’s fine, but, clearly, Tocchet’s trying to get him to play a certain way in Philly.
Carter Hutton: That’s the main goal here right it’s this is what you’re gonna see a lot with younger players that are ultra-talented, and I think there is a little bit of that separation, because he’s a Russian player… and he wants to play his style of game, and this is something that was highlighted when John Tortorella was there. His ice time has gone down. Last year, at the end of the season, he was playing around 20 minutes a night. Now it’s dropping down because there needs to be accountability. That’s where it falls into that line of, ‘What do you want to become as a player, Michkov? If you’re going to play run-and-gun and you’re going to try to not defend as well as you can in your D zone, then you’re going to have to watch hockey games.
That’s where Rick Tocchet, I think his veteran leadership and trying to get through to his players. I also feel like he’s trying to keep it out of the media. This is trying to be done behind closed doors. He doesn’t want to fray that relationship in the sense of what’s going on with Michkov, but when there is a lash out like that on the bench, you kind of have to answer the questions and what comes with the territory. I think long-term goal is to try to get him to a player that can be good defensively, because we know he has the offensive upside of being creative.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…